| Yeah, here's the first chapter of the novella. It's rather long, over 20,000 words, so I'll be posting it once every couple of days, it's fully finished and everything I just need to proofread, so if you see any grammatical or spelling mistakes, beside purposeful ones, please let me know. Anyway here's the quick synopsis: An assassin is hired to kill a mark but through events outside of his control, he gets into something totally out of his league. It does have harsh language like my other story and a crapload of violence and torture, nothing ridiculously violent or stomach churning though. (At least not to me...) However if you're squeamish or easily offended, you might want to skip on this one. You've been warned. For Those Who Don't Believe In God Part 1: Into the Fire, Into the Frying Pan “Who do you want killed?” “Look, I’ve never really done this before so…” “Don’t worry about, I’m about as simple as it gets. You just tell me who you want to get a little lead present, you give me a picture of them and one hundred dollars, and I make sure that the gift gets delivered on time.” “Just one hundred dollars?” “Well that’s if there’s just a single target with no complications, if there are complications well … either the price goes up or you end up with a bullet from me right between your eyes. It all depends on just how complicated it gets.” “Oh, okay. Well … here’s a picture of them…” ***** That’s a pretty basic business transaction with me. You set down the money, you give me a face, I give you one dead body. Simple. Easy. Efficient. Of course if you try to fuck me over, well there’ll be hell to pay. And you’d be surprised how many people try to fuck me over, more than I can count on my hands. In fact, my last client tried that to me and unfortunately, he got away with it. I ran out of bullets. He just sent in man after man after man until one of them got lucky. Until he found one that was better than me. Until one of them caught me in the side of the head with a brick. Not to worry, it was just a flesh wound, hurts like hell and knocked me out, but it won’t be fatal. Far from it, they don’t want me dead. That would take all the fun right out of it, you know, the torture and whatnot. Some of the guys in the dark world of downtown seem to get their rocks off with all that. One of my eyes is stuck shut from the dried blood that dripped from my head wound. My arms are tied behind me and the rope’s beginning to grind itself into my wrists, if they aren’t bleeding already, they will be shortly. Same with my ankles. And I’ve got one hell of a headache. From the looks of the guy standing in front of me, it’s only going to get that much worse. This guy’s just itching for a fight, itching for some blood, my blood in particular. I can see it by the way he’s eyeing me. Just waiting for his boss’s go ahead so he can slap me around a little, or a lot as the case may be, with those massive hands he has, all covered in scars. Just waiting to bury them into my face. Well, I guess I deserve it and all, I mean I did go against my contract. The first rule of this job is that you don’t go back on your contract, no matter what. I told the guy that it would only cost him one hundred dollars, standard fee for me, but after I got to know the target, one hundred dollars wasn’t enough. One billion dollars wasn’t enough. First rule of the business, never get to know the person you’re supposed to kill. A guy walks into the room with me and the bruiser, he isn’t the gangbanger type. Quite the opposite, he’s a suit; he’s a guy who belongs on Wall Street, not on Shit Street. A gray suit that probably cost about as much as a year’s rent of the hole that I call my apartment. Shades that are probably the same price as the suit. He slides them off, acting like a true Hollywood badass and I know that I know the guy. He’s the one who contacted me, the one who gave me a face and a Benjamin. When he’d done that, I’d never guessed that he was this big. I mean with the torture room and the bruiser and everything, he had to be a part of some sort of gang or syndicate. When he came to me all nervous, clearly an act now, I’d thought he was just some business man who wanted someone dead. That’s why I ditched the job, I mean if you ditch on some business man who’s never lived a life on the streets, who’s never watched someone die, whoopdeefuckingdo. However, you ditch a job on someone who’s a part of a syndicate— You’re fucked. It was one of those things where you don’t really realize how over your head everything is until it’s too late to swim to the top and get a breath. Well this guy in the Armani suit, he squats down next to me in the chair, looks me dead in the eyes and says, “Well, well, looks like someone’s awake. Which is good for me, not that I can say the same about you. Where is she, Ben?” “Where’s who?” I croak, dying frogs sound better than I do right now. “Don’t play stupid with me, your target, where is she?” “I’ve got a couple of ideas but since I was taken here by your men I haven’t had all that much contact with her,” I replied as calmly as I could under the circumstances. He gritted his teeth, knowing that he wasn’t going to get anything from me. So he tried a different tactic, “Why didn’t you kill her in the first place Ben, huh?” I smirked, “I ran out of bullets.” ***** I stood outside the girl’s apartment, leaned up against a cracked old trashcan, checking and rechecking my gun. You want to keep it clean, send two bullets into your target’s head, BAM BAM, and then you walk away. A quick double tap and they don’t even have time to think about what happened to them. Simple. Easy. Efficient. My kind of job. You don’t draw it out, you don’t make them suffer, you just get it over with and walk away. But on this particular day, not everything was quite perfect. Oh no, because you see the person that hired me, Armani suit man, well he decided it wasn’t important for me to know that there might be other people running around looking for the target. There were nine of them, milling around the area trying not to look suspicious. Problem with trying not to looks suspicious is that you look awfully suspicious to anyone who happens to know what to look for. Take for instance the guy who sipped his coffee every forty five seconds on the dot. Or the guy who kept checking the time on his cell phone every sixty five seconds. Hell, they all looked at the door at the exact same time. And I’ll admit right now, just so you don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not the best bullet in this city but I made these guys look like kindergarteners with paintball guns. I actually felt sorry for the sorry son of a bitch who had actually spent money on the goons. I didn’t really think that these guys were after my mark, I mean, you don’t need nine people to take down a college girl, but it was just some sort of coincidence that they were camped out in front of the same building as me. That was a mistake. Fifth rule in the business, there are no coincidences. Not here on the streets. I should’ve gone ahead and made sure my second gun was within easy reach and not in the small of my back; I should’ve taken them all out right then and there, killed all nine of them and then been able to reload and take down my mark. But I didn’t, I shrugged them off. It wasn’t until my mark walked out the door with one of her friends that I realized she was a very important person that day. I was taking my aim when about five of the goons started moving toward her and her friend. Honestly, I was going to let them kill her and take the credit for it but then I realized they weren’t trying to kill her. They were trying to capture her. That would make my contract a whole lot harder. I watched for a second waiting for them to kill her, one of them knocked her friend aside with a backhand that I heard twenty yards away, she flew off and didn’t get back up. I didn’t check up on her but I’d assume that best case scenario she was unconscious. Worst case, her neck was broken. But like I said, she wasn’t really my problem. I watched the five converge on her, grabbing her legs and arms, pulling her away, not killing her. She was a feisty little bitch and she put up a terrific fight, knees and elbows and nails all over the place, she even hit home a couple of times, made a couple of the bastards bleed. But she was way too small to take down all five of them. Hell, I think that Andre the Giant would have had trouble. But when I realized that she wasn’t going to die, I had to step in. I mean, I didn’t have the time to follow them to wherever they were planning to take her and if there were more of them, I just didn’t have the fire power to take them down. No, she had to die. And she had to die right then. When her head presented a clear target, I squeezed the trigger. It didn’t hit her. It hit one of the goons who had moved at the last minute, smashing into his meaty shoulder and making him cry out in pain. Damn. Now I’d have to kill every last one of them before I got a hit on my mark. As he was turning to see what had hit him, I sent a double tap into the side of his head. Two holes appeared and two splashes of gore flew out the other side of his head, drenching my mark and a couple of his friends with red meaty chunks. The girl stopped squirming. The others looked at me, shocked. Fucked. By the time they realized there was a threat, dropped my mark and then reached for their guns, I’d have double tapped every one of them. So that’s exactly what I set about to do. I had double tapped three of them before I remembered something: There were four more. I barely had managed to drop to my knees before the brick were my head had been erupted from the wall, shrapnel going everywhere. The explosions began moving down the wall but by the time they got to where I was crouched, I’d already rolled behind the metal trashcan. Not much for cover if they were packing any sort of serious heat but I doubted they were. If they were trying to stay incognito, they wouldn’t have any sort of large weapon and they’d be limited to handguns, and handguns they’d have to hide. That meant no magnums, so unless they had full metal jackets I was okay, at least for a little bit. Long enough. I popped out from the side of the trashcan, figuring they’d have expected me to pop straight up and have had their sights trained right there. I sent one bullet into one of the punk’s arms, and another into his nose, dropping him. Then I ducked back before they were able to get a bead on me. The trashcan shook and rang as bullets were poured into it, but none punched all the way through. Like I had thought, they weren’t using anything heavy, they were expecting to deal with a teenage girl, that’s all. I popped straight up this time and saw the three of them in about the same areas they were earlier, except now crouched behind various things they thought would make useful cover. It was going to be a massacre. I took down another one of them before I crouched back behind the trashcan again. I would either have to take them down quickly or move because they were turning the front of the trashcan into Swiss cheese, it wouldn’t be long if they punched through the back and hit me. I rolled out to the left of the trash can and crouched sending a bullet into where I thought one of their heads would be, I got his stomach instead. And then he got a free shot at me. I was up and running, trying to keep my head down when I got hit in the side of the leg. It wasn’t fatal by any stretch of the mind but it hurt like hell, and it slowed me down. I sent a shot across in a blind fire but I’m sure it didn’t hit anyone. Then another bullet caught me in the side, knocking the air out of me and sending me stumbling. I turned the stumble into a dive and got the upper half of myself safe behind an old postage box. The blue metal giving me a minute’s protection from the onslaught of bullets. I army crawled all the way behind it but not before another bullet went into the middle of my shin. It hurt enough to make me cry out in pain but it wasn’t fatal, it just meant that combined with my other leg wound, I’d have to limp for quite some time. What really worried me was my side wound, it looked and felt like they’d hit something important and blood was pumping out of it and dribbling onto the concrete. I pressed my off hand against it trying to stop the bleeding and making me grit my teeth in pain. I might as well have let it bleed for all the good it did me. Blood just slid around my fingers and kept squirting. The concrete by my feet now covered by a coat of angry red paint. I was also beginning to feel a little light headed. That was never good, especially in a gunfight. I stuck my head and gun out and took my shot, killing the bastard who I had hit in the stomach with an encore to the head, then I ducked back making a mental note of where his partner was, behind a wooden bench. When pushed myself up again, I didn’t even check I just sent a bullet where he had been, it caught him in the throat, and he went down clutching at the blood pouring from his torn to shreds jugular. I stood up slowly, it was painful enough to knock me off balance but I managed to balance on my one good leg with my wounded one barely touching. Gun at the ready I shuffled back to the apartment, back to where my mark had been, knowing that I’d have to deal with my bastard employer for this. I clutched my side and swayed into view of the apartment only to be met with the threat of, “Stop right now or I’ll kill the girl.” I looked back and there was the last of the five that had gone after her, one arm wrapped around her throat, the other pressing a gun to her temple. Tears were in her eyes as was hope as she turned them upon me. I almost laughed. “Go ahead,” I muttered. “Save me the trouble.” “I mean it,” the guy snarled, smashing the barrel into the girl’s temple. She winced but didn’t cry out or scream. Like I said, she was one feisty bitch. It was a shame I had to kill her but a job was a job and I always completed my jobs. I lifted my gun and leveled it at the guy’s head, “Go ahead, pull that trigger and see what happens.” I smiled and then my head felt seven sizes too small. I had to take a step forward to keep me from falling down. Not good. The guy gritted his teeth, “Looks like we’re at a standstill—” I pulled the trigger and watched his head explode, a shower of red bathing my mark, but she still refused to scream. “No it doesn’t,” I breathed. I looked at my mark and she gave a tight little smile in my direction, no doubt about to thank me for saving her life. I couldn’t wait to see her face when I blew it to pieces, to watch that hope turn to horror as she realized I was trying to kill her all along. I shifted the barrel of the gun and pulled the trigger. All I got was an empty click. I had forgotten to reload; I’d forgotten to count my shots. I reached back to grab the extra clip I was carrying in my back pocket but then I was horribly off balance, I tried to take a step back but my leg refused to listen. I fell back and as I stared up at the sky, the edges of my vision started turning into swirling shades of black and brown. As they began to meet each other in the center, I saw my mark’s face looking down on me, in horror and something else. Something that I had never seen anyone ever give me in a look since I’d moved out: caring. My mark cared for me. Isn’t that something for the funny papers? Then I couldn’t see and then I couldn’t feel and then there was nothing. |
FALLEN101Oct 25, 2009 11:21 AM
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| wow that was a great story! "Isn't that something for the funny papers?" I laughed so hard after reading that. It was just freakin hilarious is what it was. As always your story was freakin amazing with nothing I can criticize on. All I have to say is... Please write more! XD |
 ~Signature made by Dea37s~ Night Academy I.D. |
| Part 2: Lights Out The idiot laughed, laughed like he had been my best friend since the first grade. “You ran out of bullets? You ran out of bullets. Well, that’s an excuse you don’t usually hear from a hitman, now is it?” he said with a fake smile, clearly pissed off beneath it. When I didn’t reply he snarled, his smile contorting into something evil, “Is it?!” Deciding not to show any sort of weakness during this whole thing, I didn’t say a word. I just shrugged, and immediately regretted it as the rope dug into my arms, fresh blood dripping onto the floor behind me. Then the back of his hand caught me across the jaw, popping one of my teeth out. I kept my head turned away and spat it out, along with a stream of blood. “Now before you really piss me off, why didn’t you kill her?” he asked more forcefully. “I’m telling the truth, I ran out of bullets, you didn’t tell me that there would be ten other goons I’d have to kill just to get to her.” “I hired them to ensure you got her!” he spat. “They were on your side and you killed all of them!” “When you gave me the money and the picture, you didn’t tell me that there were going to be more of your hired muscle going after her. Besides, they were trying to take her alive, you told me to kill her,” I replied as calmly as I could. He stared at me with his cold green eyes, trying to decide whether or not I was telling the truth. Apparently, I didn’t hold up to his scrutiny. “So you want me to believe that you killed all my men and took her under your wing just because you ran out of bullets?” he shook his head slowly. “I mean you must be able to see how terrible your defense is. Now, this is the last time I’m going to ask nicely, why didn’t you kill her in the first place.” I stared at him, trying to look as tough as I could tied to a chair with blood trickling out of the corner of my mouth, “I just told you why I didn’t kill her, I ran out of bullets.” He nodded slowly, chewing his tongue, “Alright, have it your way hardass. Bruce! Teach him some manners.” The bruiser stepped forward and whipped one of his fists around so quickly that even if I hadn’t been tied to the chair, I wouldn’t have been able to dodge it. It smashed into the side of my nose and pressed it flat to my cheek, a loud crack and a swarm of pain greeting me. A stream of blood hit my legs and the floor as my vision went red for a second and tears rolled into my eyes. When I came back, Armani suit man was screaming at his bruiser, “What have I told you?! You don’t hit their head this early in the interrogation! If you give him a concussion now, he might not remember anything!! Body blows you fat son of a bitch, body blows!” “Sorry boss,” the big guy grumbled. “I just didn’ like his face.” I could tell that the suit wanted to shoot his muscle right then and there but he didn’t, instead he just grabbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes in frustration, probably counting to ten or something. When he looked up he said quietly, “Just don’t do it again.” “Sure thing boss.” Then he turned back to me and landed an anvil in my stomach and I thought I was going to die. The stitches in my side stretched and then popped and my insides began their quest of trying to get out, blood started leaking through my shirt. I gritted my teeth and tried to bear it, but I knew that if something wasn’t done about it, I’d bleed out in no time flat. “What the hell did you do?!” the suit screamed when he saw the large blot of darkness spreading along my side. “I dunno boss, I didn’ hit ‘im that hard.” ***** When I woke up, when all the black faded away into more black but I could open my eyes, it was exactly the same picture I’d just left, my mark looking down on me. The only difference was that there was something terrifically soft beneath me, instead of concrete. And she didn’t have blood all over her. I reached for my gun at my side but all I found was the warm softness of a blanket. I cursed and when I took a breath, I felt a tightness on my torso. She lightly pressed a finger to my lips to keep me from saying anything, not like I was planning to anyway, and then she reached for something just outside of my vision. It was a yellow legal pad, on it was written in a very girlie style, ‘how are you feeling?’ What the hell? That’s when I figured it all out, this chick, my mark, had taken me home and fixed me up. The irony. Now, where in God’s name was my gun? I glanced over to my left, there was a coffee table and on it where all my clothes and possessions. My gun, in the center. If I could just reach over there and get it, I wouldn’t even have to aim at this range. Yellow blurred in my periphery. I glanced back and saw her shaking the legal pad in front of me; I hadn’t answered her question yet. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I cleared it and tried again. “I’m fine,” I replied groggily. She smiled as though I was her boyfriend and I’d just asked her to marry me. I shook my head a little, “Look, I can hear just fine, I wasn’t shot in the ear or anything so why don’t you just talk to me?” She waved a hand in front of her throat, like she was trying to cut it and shook her head back and forth. She was mute. They’d sent me to kill a fucking mute. And not just me either, but ten losers packing pistols. All of us going after a mute, a mute of all people. I mean, why would someone want to kill a mute, it wasn’t like she was anything special, and it wasn’t like she could share any secrets. I nodded to show I understood. She scribbled something down on the legal pad and held it up. Underneath her first message was, ‘thank you for saving me.’ I almost broke into laughter right then but I held it in. “Yeah,” I muttered. She scribbled something quickly, ‘no really, I mean it. putting your life in danger like that.’ It almost made me sick; she actually thought that I had saved her. The guy who had killed her captors just so I could take her in dead. She thought I’d saved her, so to repay the favor, she’d fixed me up, bandaged me. The guy who was going to murder her. Speaking of which, “Why were all those guys after you anyway?” I asked, honestly wanting to know. That’s another rule of the business: don’t ask questions. Just do the job and don’t worry about the rest. Life is meaningless, life is horrible, life is hollow, life is worthless, life is pain. You are doing everyone a favor by planting a bullet in their skull, two if you’re doing it right. That’s what my job was, not trying to figure out why I was getting paid to do it. All that matters is that I’m paid to do it, therefore I do it. She shrugged and then wrote, ‘I’m not sure.’ Then a pause before she wrote, ‘why did you decide to protect me? I mean it was such a big risk to you and you didn’t even know who I was.’ Do you want the truth or a lie? “Well, if I told you why I helped you, you wouldn’t believe me,” I replied. She stared at me for a second then scribbled, ‘try me.’ Fair enough, I mean it wouldn’t bother me if I told her all about it before I killed her, just so I did it. I looked over at my gun on the table, all I had to do was lean across and grab it, it would take maybe three seconds, another one to line it up, no problem at all. I mean, where would she run? “I killed them because they were trying to capture you, alive.” She stared at me blankly. “And I was hired to kill you,” I said, giving her barely enough time to register what I had said as I leaned across the gap and reached for the gun. I felt a tight pull against my chest, then a spike of pain arched up from my side up to my ribs and I heard a popping sound. My wound, I’d moved my stomach too much and the stitches had popped. The pain floored me, literally. I slid off the couch and onto the ground, blood pulsing out of my side, covering the bandage in red and then pooling through it, getting the blanket all red and sticky, some of it hitting the floor. My God, did it hurt. My vision pulsed with my heart and before I knew it the pulsing stopped, the black covering it like a blindfold. Before I went out for good, I felt fingers touching me tenderly, pulling the blanket back. Then a hard push in my side. No, no you bitch. I just admitted that I was going to kill you, don’t help me. Don’t help me. |
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| Part 3: Cigarette Burns Same thing was happening to me as I sat there in the chair, blood oozing freely, not bound by the bandages and tape any longer. Stupid bastard, didn’t know how to interrogate a person correctly, two punches and he’d already killed me. I knew what would happen, my vision would go black, I’d go cold and then they’d have nothing. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should tell them, I mean if I did they’d surely give me medical attention but then they’d just torture me until I either broke or died. I mean either way, it ending almost the exact same. So I didn’t say a word. Unfortunately I didn’t have too. A fourth party stepped into the room, an all black suit on, the tie and shirt as well, and an overcoat thrown over it. In one hand he held a sheathed sword. Meet Antony Malice. Meet the guy who bashed me in the head with a brick. He’s the only guy in the room that I have to respect, a real hitman. I’m serious; he makes me look like a two-bit hack. Hell, compared to him, I am a two-bit hack. Every major hit in the past ten years has had this guy there in the background somewhere. Almost all the government agencies have a file on him. What’s bad is that most of his work isn’t even recorded. What’s worse is the only weapon he’s ever used is that sword. Well, until me at least. Then he used the brick. The man is a death walking and waiting to happen. If he has a contract on you, there’s a pretty good chance that the next morning you won’t be with us any longer. It’s a damn good chance you won’t be with us any longer. This guy lives death, he breathes it like you and I breathe air. He walks it, he hands it out left and right with that sword of his. A katana aptly named Scythe. The fucking reaper on our very plane, and he’s yours if you’re willing to pay his fee. Not nearly as cheap as mine. When he spoke, his voice was like scotch on the rocks, with a hint of blood in the glass, “Both of you, stop arguing. He just broke his stitches. If you want to get anything out of him, you’ll have to bandage that up, otherwise he’ll bleed out.” Damn, leave it to the professional to give it all away. “What!? I don’t have supplies to waste on this piece of shit,” Armani snarled. “Well then I suggest you get some because otherwise you won’t be able to find the girl,” Malice breathed. “At the very least, you need to stop the bleeding.” Armani snarled and then barked orders at his big fisted lackey who ran off to obey them. “Well Malice, I didn’t know you used weapons besides that oversized butter knife,” I said. He smiled, it made my blood stop pumping, “I don’t, you’re the only exception. They hired me on to kill the girl and when they realized that you’d hidden her, they paid even more to have me take you here, alive. You can’t really knock someone unconscious with a sword.” “I’m flattered.” “You should be, you’re the only man whose faced me and lived to talk about it,” his smile disappeared. “Although, I don’t think that you’ll be talking after my employer is through with you. Ah well, it’s a bitter business, isn’t it.” “Well Malice, you’d better hope I don’t come out of here alive because if I do, you’re the first person on my shit list,” I said with a smirk. He smiled, “I’ll be looking forward to it, I can’t have someone running around saying that they fought me and survived, it would be terrible for my reputation. You can understand, can’t you?” I nodded, knowing he was sincere. He really would kill me to improve his reputation. And he’d do it without a second thought. “But the way it’s looking now, unless my employer actually learns to interrogate, he’ll probably send me in to do the dirty work and if that happens … well, it’s not going to be pretty let’s just say that. Professional courtesy will keep me from going as far as I normally do with the people I interrogate but you still won’t enjoy it, so I apologize beforehand but it’s what I’m being paid for.” I blanched, I’d heard stories about his interrogations and they were enough to give you nightmares. He’d use his sword and start sending little pieces of you all over the place. Messy but effective. I just hoped that Armani suit man would find a better, less effective way to torture me. One that would leave me in one piece at least. Malice looked over his shoulder and smiled, “Well, it looks like you’re not going to bleed out all over the floor,” and then he stepped away. Behind him Bruce had walked in holding a blowtorch and a metal bar. Oh shit. They were going to cauterize it, and not a good cauterization either, a painful sucky cauterization that would stop the major part of the bleeding but leave some of it seeping out and my side painful as hell. Then they’d use the red hot metal and do other interesting but painful things to me. Armani suit man took the materials from Bruce and came over to me, his bright white teeth bared in a smile, “I’m sure you know what’s going to happen now, don’t you Ben?” I didn’t reply. “Well, I wanted to do this to you myself, I normally let my men do all this for me but you just piss me off that much.” I decided to act like an asshole to cover up my fear, “Yeah I know what you’re going to do. Tell me, exactly how many gangster movies have you watched because so far this whole torture thing has been completely unoriginal.” His grin spread wider, “Oh don’t worry, when we’re done playing our way with you, we’ll let Malice do his work.” I just stared at him and clenched my teeth together. So that was it, they were just playing with me right now, knowing that I wouldn’t give them the information they wanted. Then when Malice got to me… I don’t know. I didn’t think I would be able to keep Sarah’s location a secret anymore. Armani suit man lit the torch and started heating the end of the metal, until it glowed a hot red. Then without any sort of warning, he thrust it forward, jabbing me in the side. At first, it just knocked the wind out of me and hurt but then I felt the heat. I felt my blood boiling and my skin puckering and crawling, shrinking away from the heat but it couldn’t get away. I involuntarily tried to jerk away but I couldn’t get away from it, the ropes held me tight. It kept getting more and more painful and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse; it did and just kept going. My vision went swimming in red and I screamed, I couldn’t help it. I screamed and screamed and just kept screaming. And then there wasn’t a pressure in my side anymore but it still burned. My skin kept smoldering. I was sweating and gasping, that was quite possibly the most painful thing that had ever been done to me. If he would’ve kept it up much longer, I would’ve broke, cracked like a fucking egg. I would’ve told them everything they wanted to know but mercifully Armani suit man didn’t know what he was doing. When I looked back at his face and the grin on it, I knew I was wrong. He knew exactly what he was doing. “What’s the matter Ben, didn’t like that too much?” I didn’t reply, I physically couldn’t, my body was too focused on blocking off the pain coming from my side to allow me to speak. I just didn’t have the energy to come up with some witty remark or even spit in his face. The bastard had almost broken me, and he knew it. “Here, let’s get that hair out of your eyes,” he said with a vicious smile that reminded me of child molesters and rapists. He reached forward with the still orange pipe like he was going to use it to move my hair, but he didn’t. He lightly touched it to my eyebrow, which forced me to flinch back away from the heat, then he jammed it on my right cheek. I hurt. It really fucking hurt. I felt my skin sizzle and peel away, I felt it blister and pop, and I smelled it as it cooked, as it burned. I tore away but he followed me with the metal, making me cry out, making me scream. And in the background I could hear him laughing. Finally, he pulled the metal away. “Are you ready to talk yet Ben?” My chest heaved, I could barely see but I gritted my teeth and looked him in the eye. “No,” I breathed. And the red end came at me again. ***** When I came to the second time, she wasn’t standing over me. She was across the room, dozing in an old recliner that made her look tiny and fragile. I looked at the table where my gun had been the time before and sure enough, it was gone. Instead, there was her yellow legal pad that said, ‘don’t try to get up. you’ll tear your stitches out again.’ So she’d hidden all my stuff. Great, now I’d have to find some other messier way to kill her than with a simple bullet. But after what happened last time, I didn’t think I would be able to sit up and do anything that messy. I sighed, only one way to find out. I started sitting up and the pain in my side knocked me back down. I groaned and I heard a stirring on the other side of the room. I looked over and saw my mute target stretching like a cat. She looked over at me and smiled then with her hands she asked, ‘How are you feeling?’ Then she realized what she had done and hopped over to the legal pad to write it out. “No, you don’t have to write it down, I can understand sign language,” I said as she picked up the pencil. Long story, I used to have a guy who I worked with when I was first learning the business, we used sign language to communicate and still stay silent. I only have a cursory knowledge of it and most of the parts I know involve the business but I can piece together what people are saying with it most times. At least get the gist of it all. ‘How are you?’ she asked again, her hand jerking around. “I’ll be fine. Where’s my stuff?” She shook her head, ‘I put that all in another room. Why, do you need it?’ Yeah I need it, to blow your head off. I shrugged, “No, I just wanted to know where it went.” Mentally I was beating my face against a wall because I wouldn’t be able to get my weapon until I could move, and I couldn’t move until my wound was halfway healed. I’d have to stay here under the care of my mark until I could kill her. And let’s not forget, there was another group wandering around out there that wanted to take her in alive, and wanted to take the guy who killed nine of their men in dead. Things were definitely not looking up. This was probably going to be the hardest I ever had to work for one hundred dollars. She nodded knowingly, even though she didn’t know, even though she didn’t have a clue. Then she asked, ‘What’s your name?’ For a second I hesitated, trying to decide whether or not to give her my real name. After mulling it over, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give her my real name, I mean as soon as I could get my hands on my gun; she was as good as dead. “My name’s Ben, Ben Taylor. What’s yours?” I asked out of politeness, I could care less. She spelled her name out with her hands, ‘S-A-R-A-H pause C-A-R-S-O-N.’ I repeated it and she smiled and nodded. A pretty name for a tombstone. My stitches itched and I reached down to rub it out of them when I touched my bare skin and realized something, I wasn’t wearing clothes. I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Look, I may be a hitman but there are just certain things that I don’t like, like being declothed by some girl who I’ve never met before in my life, the girl I was supposed kill. Forgive me, if I’m more than just a little bit modest. I guess that she noticed my discomfort because she asked me what was wrong. “Nothing,” I breathed. “Nothing is wrong.” I looked away from her and around the room that we were in, it had a very well lived in sort of feel, with knickknacks and whatnots all over the room. Looked like the sort of thing a girl just out of college would live in. Behind one of the windows, I saw a blur of motion. Hurriedly I asked, “Where are we?” She pointed to her chest. “You brought me back to your place?” I asked, my eyes flicking around. She nodded. Oh shit. How long had I been out? Well, saying I had been out twice meant that there was more than off chance that whoever else was after her had the place surrounded. And when they stormed in, they were going to find me. And they were going to kill me. “I pulled myself into a sitting up position with my arms, it hurt like hell and there was more than once when I thought my stitches were going to pop out again but I managed to get up, panting from the exertion and pain. All the while, her hands were flying about telling me I shouldn’t sit up, then she moved over to help me. Her hands lightly ran over my side, tracing my muscle lines to the wound, as she was gently testing the stitches to see if any had broken I grabbed hold of her hand, jerking her eyes up to mine almost instantly. “I’m alright,” I said hastily, “but we won’t be here shortly.” She looked confused. “You know those guys that were after you, the ones I saved you from?” She nodded. “Well, their buddies came here and they’ve got this entire place surrounded, so I want you to do exactly what I say and don’t ask questions and maybe we’ll make it out alive.” She looked worried but nodded slowly. “Okay, I need all my stuff, just bring it in here.” She hesitated. “Now! They’ll be in here any minute now,” I ordered. She got up and moved into the room, I watched the windows and hoped that the guys were still getting set up for the assault and that maybe they were still trying to confirm whether or not anyone was inside. “And stay as far as you can from the windows,” I said as loud as I dared. I didn’t know if she heard or not but she came in shortly, my bundle in her arms and she set it down on the coffee table. Then she looked at me and waited for more of my orders. “Okay, now go through it and pull out my guns, there should be three of them, two are fairly large, the other is a Derringer, do you know what that is?” She nodded. “Okay, now go ahead and pull all those out.” She started rummaging through the bundle pulling the guns out. I licked my lips; those goons would be coming in any second now. “Come on, come on,” I breathed so low that she couldn’t hear it, but I knew that she was moving as quickly as she could. All three guns were on the table before she could look up I said, “Now you need to find all the ammo I’ve got, each gun should have two clips in there, besides the Derringer. Pull all those out, and hand me the gun there on the left.” She held it out to me with one hand while the other continued rummaging, finding and pulling out the different clips, setting them down on the table beside the guns. “Hand me one of those clips,” I said as I slid the empty one out of the gun in my hand, letting it fall to the carpet. She tossed me the clip and I slid it in. I could’ve killed her right then, could’ve blown her head off right then and there and ended the whole thing. But right then she looked at me, her eyes so full of hope, so full of trust. Not that it mattered in my decision or anything, it’s just that if things got really hairy it would be good to have backup. That’s really what made my decision, not her. No I would’ve actually had a choice; I would’ve blasted her right then. “Alright, have you ever used a gun before?” Her head shook, tossing her hair about. “Well, you’ve got two options, you can either hide over hear and help me reload, or you can take the Derringer and use it to defend yourself.” After a moment’s hesitation, she grabbed the gun. “Alright, now hand me the third gun and all the clips and I’m going to give you a thirty second rundown of how to use a gun.” She tossed me the gun and all the clips. “With that gun in your hand, it’s the simplest thing and the hardest thing you’ll ever do. All you’ve got to do is level that at whoever you want dead and then pull the trigger. With how close they’ll have to be in here, you won’t really have to worry about aiming. The only problem is pulling that trigger and deciding that you absolutely want that person dead. “Then everything else is just embroidery. You understand?” Her eyes fell upon the gun in her hand for a few moments and then she nodded. “And when you shoot, make sure your arm is fully extended, it makes it easier.” I was about to give her another pointer but I didn’t get the chance. One of the windows broke. I raised my gun and started firing. |
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| I've only read a couple of paragraphs of part one, and I can already tell you have an amazing writing voice, but I just have to say - isn't 100 dollars for a hit a teensy bit too cheap??? lol |
~ Nothing makes us as lonely as our own secrets ~      |
| Excellent story! I reaaaaally want to read the rest ^^ |
~ Nothing makes us as lonely as our own secrets ~ |
| Oh well if you're interested it's up on my Fictionpress account here. I changed the name to "Worth Living For, Worth Dying For, And Everything in Between." Thanks for the interest in it. |
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